GOVERNMENT AND PRESS

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 1, 17 January 1944, Page 7

GOVERNMENT AND PRESS

Relations after the War

“ Is the outspoken desire of the press for independence matched by an equal sense of public service on the part of those who direct it ? ” asks the Economist in an article on wartime press controls in Britain. Those interested in the issues raised in the article should refer back to Current Affairs Discussion Bulletin No. 6, “ Newspapers and the News.”

There are two aspects of the present campaign for an independent post-war press which require somewhat more careful consideration than has so far been given.

On the one hand there is a tendency to overstate the degree of wartime control over the newspapers. Paper is harshly rationed, and the most important news, for reasons of national security and the exigencies of warmaking, is passed through an official filter ; but the expression of views, apart from a range of safeguards for the defence of the realm, which in fact have operated very far from onerously, has been quite remarkably unconstrained. With regard to the post-war period, on the other hand, too much, perhaps, has been said by the representatives of the press about what the Government must not do, and too little, certainly about what the press itself must do, if it is to discharge fully its great public responsibilities.